There’s a fascinating article on the EMR and HIPAA blog that I couldn’t pass up.
It addresses one governmental (i.e. Medicare) solution to the traditionally low adoption rates of physicians of EMR’s: lower the upfront costs to essentially zero with the VistA system built by the Veterans Administration.
The clincher for me was the following observation:
While Medicare’s plan is to offer the software for free, one must ask what free is. Currently, free is software but not training, installation, and ongoing support.
My commented response, heavily informed by the collective wisdom garnered from the recent NextGen Users Group Meeting, is reproduced below: